


Why I Need You

by apolloadama



Series: I Can Feel You [3]
Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Sequel, idk i'm just making up ship names, lanelinham, linham, linlane, nick lane not physically present but referenced, redverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-19
Updated: 2012-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-05 16:04:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolloadama/pseuds/apolloadama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I highly advise reading "I Can Feel You" first. There are direct callbacks to that, as well as a couple to the sequel-sidefic, "I Like It All That Way." I suppose this might still make sense without reading parts one and two, but this really is part three of a series. </p><p>As usual mucho thanks to Tumblr user lesliecrusher for keeping me writing and excited and also allowing me to scream at her about my feelings. You are actually the best.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Why I Need You

**Author's Note:**

> I highly advise reading "I Can Feel You" first. There are direct callbacks to that, as well as a couple to the sequel-sidefic, "I Like It All That Way." I suppose this might still make sense without reading parts one and two, but this really is part three of a series. 
> 
> As usual mucho thanks to Tumblr user lesliecrusher for keeping me writing and excited and also allowing me to scream at her about my feelings. You are actually the best.

Lincoln is surprised at how little he misses coffee. It had been his companion on many a long night when sleep wouldn’t come, or shouldn’t come, because the dreams were too terrible to endure. Coffee had been his date at late nights in the diner, doing crossword after crossword, trying to make everything fit into the little boxes because the only thing in his life that did make sense was grids of letters falling into place, simple answers to complex clues, the total opposite of his world since Robert had died.

Now, in the other universe ( _should he still call it the “other” universe? it's just “the universe” now_ ), he doesn't stay up late sitting by himself in diners. Instead, he stays up late reading articles on world history, because figuring out how this world is different from his own makes it seem less alien—less  _alternate_ —and that's almost as comforting as scribbling letters into boxes. He’s also not in diners because somehow he’s actually the luckiest guy in the world _(in the universe)_ and Liv had asked him if he wanted to stay in her spare room until he found his own apartment.

Liv. Not Olivia, not Agent Dunham, not _stop-looking-at-her-like-that-she-belongs-to-Peter_ … she was Liv now, had let him casually fall into calling her that, and made a face when he accidentally said her whole name— _does she think I think she’s the other one?_ he wonders—and Liv is the only person he can think about sometimes, when he’s sitting on the couch in her living room and he can hear the shower running and knows she’s in there or he’s in the kitchen making cereal and she’s getting dressed just on the other side of the wall or especially, _especially_ , when they’re sitting together at her table eating dinner and he can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to be permanent in her apartment, instead of a temporary guest. 

For how much he never mistakes her for Olivia, he catches her staring at him sidelong sometimes, this inscrutable expression on her face, and then she snaps out of it and shakes her head and he can see the sadness etched in every curve and line of her face and knows he’s making her think of the other Lincoln, _her Lincoln_ , and he’s reminded like a slap that he’ll never be exactly what she wants, or needs, because that Lincoln was _so much_ and so full of feeling and he’s numb, numb from years of loneliness and never being fully in love or loved. 

But it’s getting better, slowly, shifting and sliding into place, and some days Lincoln feels at ease, laughing endlessly with her over some inconsequential but bizarre difference between their universes (“Why are they called Backstreet Boys?”), or at something on TV because Lincoln has to admit, the shows here are so much better than back home ( _home?_ ), or when Liv’s telling him some funny story about the other Lincoln and they laugh but sober quickly and there’s an awkward silence before Lincoln catches her eyes with his and smiles tightly, wanting to reach out and hold her hand and never let go but not quite there yet, not yet. 

And then—those moments fester inside him until the irrational guilt he has for looking like the other Lincoln drives him out of the apartment, him giving her some excuse about needing to acclimate to the differences in the outside world. Then he takes a train into the city and wanders the streets aimlessly, looking for a quiet teahouse where he can wish he has a cup of coffee and a crossword puzzle, but instead has a mug of earl grey tea and a tablet with an article about the alternate history of the microwave. 

Lincoln is sitting in the corner of a popular teahouse he’s been to a few times before, halfway through reading the article when he realizes he doesn’t even know the history of the invention of the microwave in his original universe and he looks up in exasperation. And sees Nick Lane coming into the shop. 

Nick sees him too, his expression one of surprise but also… _thrill_ , Lincoln thinks. Nick orders something and then comes to sit across from Lincoln at the table. 

“Lincoln, it’s great to see you again,” Nick says, smiling expansively, and Lincoln smiles back. 

“Yeah, it’s good to see you too, Nick. How have you been?”

Nick laughs. “You mean, since the weird freaky time—" he lowers his voice—“when we went to _another universe_ and my entire world flipped upside down?” 

“Sorry about that,” Lincoln says, tilting his head. “I didn’t mean for… when you came in, and then I told Agent Dunham about your vision—I had no idea they would want you to do that.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It was fun!” Nick grins and takes a sip of whatever he’s drinking. 

“Well, good,” Lincoln says, then pauses, unsure where to take the conversation.

“So, what are you doing over here, anyway? Did they… reassign you to another universe or something?”

Lincoln chuckles and looks down. “Um, I decided to stay over here. I think I’m more useful here.”

Nick nods, but then leans forward and whispers conspiratorially, “And you totally have a thing for the redhead.”

Lincoln’s eyes widen and he sputters a little. “I—what—”

“Oh please, Linc. I know a crush when I see one. Remember, you used to have one on _me_.” 

Lincoln furrows his brow and shakes his head. “What?”

Nick shrugs. “I mean, I assume you did. You’re not the Lincoln I grew up with, but with how much fun I had with that one in high school I assume you and the other one had your own thing too.”

He doesn’t know what to say. This Nick and the other Lincoln had a— _thing_? “I don’t remember that.” 

Nick raises his eyebrows. “Man, you really missed out, then. Lincoln was my first handjob.”

Lincoln coughs loudly and looks around, but no one’s within hearing distance. “Are you—why are we talking about this?”

“Well, we don’t have to. Let’s talk about that redhead instead,” says Nick, leaning back and linking his hands behind his head, grinning.

“She’s not—I mean, we’re not together,” Lincoln says, and he can’t keep the edge of regret out of his voice.

Nick makes a face. “Why not? I thought she had a thing for you too.”

“No—I…” Lincoln trails off and looks down at his mug of tea. “I just remind her of someone she used to love.”

“Used to?”

“He—uh, he died. Recently.”

“Wait, are we talking about my Lincoln?” And the slightly possessive way Nick says _my Lincoln_ makes Lincoln look up in confusion. He narrows his eyes and studies Nick’s face, trying to figure him out. Nick puts his hands down and leans forward, continuing his interrogation. “Because he—I thought you were him, when I went to the DOD at first, but obviously you’re not, and you never said where he was.” 

Lincoln sighs. “I guess you have a right to know. He was killed several weeks ago, doing his job.”

Nick whistles low. “Shit, man.” He takes a second and puts a hand to his chin, scratching vaguely, staring off into the distance. 

Lincoln wonders how close the other Lincoln had been with this Nick, because Nick looks _sad_ and Lincoln is trying, trying to remember his relationship with his universe’s Nick Lane, because he remembers Nick, remembers that they lived down the street from each other, that he dated Kendra Lane, that she broke up with him when he—well—he doesn’t remember exactly why she dumped him. There’s this hole in his memory where he can see Kendra’s face but he’s feeling something indescribable inside himself and he’s not sure what it is or why he suddenly hears that song “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” by Jeff Buckley in his head, but— 

Nick suddenly says, “So—”

Lincoln snaps back to attention.

Nick continues, “He and the redhead—”

“Agent Dunham,” Lincoln corrects him.

“—they were together?”

“I… Not officially. But I got the feeling there was something there that… I mean, something really strong,” Lincoln finishes lamely.

“Well, that’s tough,” Nick says, “but that doesn’t mean she’s not into you too.”

“It’s not that simple,” Lincoln replies, shaking his head. “It feels wrong… asking her to have feelings for me when the last time she had feelings for someone it was… for him.”

“Look,” Nick says, leaning forward and pointing a finger at Lincoln’s chest. “You don’t _ask_ someone to have feelings for you. They either do, or they don’t. And when you get lucky, you mutually have feelings for each other.” 

His tone sounds so wistful that Lincoln wonders, _Who is he talking about here?_ But before he can ask, Nick looks at his watch, winces, and then pushes his chair back. “I have to go.” 

“Oh—well. It was great seeing you,” Lincoln says. 

Nick laughs. “You really think we’re not getting together again? You know how many people I can talk to about my little adventure in the other universe?”

Lincoln starts to say, _None, you’re not allowed to,_ but Nick just laughs at his expression. 

“Exactly. You’re _it._ I’m not letting you get away from me again. Here, let me give you my number…” 

Lincoln instinctively puts his hand in his pocket for a cell phone, but then sighs, remembering the ear cuff he started wearing a couple weeks ago. He pulls it off and hands it to Nick, who presses a few buttons to wirelessly connect his cuff to Lincoln’s, exchanging numbers. Lincoln takes his cuff back and then Nick stands and clasps him on the shoulder. 

“Call me soon, okay? Whenever. And if you don’t, I’ll call you.”

Lincoln nods. “Okay, I will.”

“Great. See you, Linc.”

Lincoln watches him walk away and rubs the back of his head, turning the tablet screen back on to keep reading about microwaves, but he can’t quite focus on it, because he keeps trying to remember the Nick Lane from his universe, trying to parse out the differences between this one and that one, but there’s just this—blackness—whenever he tries to think of something specific. Lincoln bites his lip and shakes his head. Probably because there’s nothing to remember, he thinks. But the way Nick said _my Lincoln_ keeps echoing in his head, and he’s not sure why. 

\--

When Lincoln gets back to Liv’s apartment that night, she’s in the middle of making risotto and poking around in her cupboards for something to eat with it. 

She hasn’t noticed Lincoln yet in the doorway—he let himself in with the spare key she gave him—and he takes the opportunity to just watch her, taking in the way she moves like fire, purposeful and strong in everything she does, down to the way she stirs the risotto in the pan. Lincoln wants to walk up to her and put his arms around her, hold her close and whisper everything perfect about her into her ear, but it’s like he’s constructed of hesitation and he can’t pull himself out of his shell enough to give in to the occasional impulses he has to envelop someone with his affection. If he even has enough affection to give. Lincoln so often feels like half a person, a shade of a man, and it stings when he remembers the other Lincoln and how bright and shining he was compared to his own dull existence. He’s not sure he even knows how to love someone fully. He’s never been given the chance.

Lincoln clears his throat, and she looks up from grinding some pepper into the risotto and smiles at him. 

“Hey, wanderer. How was your walk?”

“Good,” he says. “I ran into Nick Lane.”

She raises an eyebrow. “How’s he doing?”

Lincoln smiles softly. “He’s fine. Wants someone to talk to about the other universe.”

“Aw, does someone have a new friend?” she teases, grinning at him. 

Lincoln shrugs and glances sideways. “Maybe. I don’t know any people here who aren’t at Fringe Division, so…”

She tilts her head and studies him for several seconds. He feels vulnerable under her gaze, but in a warm way that sends pins and needles running up and down his back. 

“What, do I have something on my face?” he asks, and then he winces. Always reminding her what his face looks like _(who his face looks like)_. 

“No, no,” she says, reaching for him, clasping his elbow loosely with a hand. “Don’t. It’s okay. I like having you here.”

He almost melts under her touch and gaze, but he doesn’t know how to respond to her. Finally, she furrows her brow and turns back to the risotto. “This will be done soon.”

“Okay,” he replies, and opens the refrigerator, finding some sausage at the back of the bottom shelf. “I think this will go with the risotto.”

She looks up and nods enthusiastically, squirming a little. “Yes! That’ll be perfect. Yum. Forgot I had that.”

He smiles at her, but she doesn’t see, her attention on adding a little more salt to the pot. 

Later, when Lincoln is eating what he thinks is probably the best risotto he’s had in his entire life, he feels the overwhelming impulse to reach his hand across the table and cover hers with it, but he knows he can’t. Instead he tucks it under his thigh and asks Liv about dinosaurs. “Are they extinct here too?” he asks glibly.

“Huh? No, of course not,” she replies, then laughs loudly at the look on his face. “I had you going for a second!” she crows, pointing at him. 

He rolls his eyes. “For all I know, they keep triceratops as pets here or something.”

She snorts. “Negative. But hey, if you wanna see dinosaurs, go check out the Natural History Museum sometime. They have a whole floor of them. Skeletons, I mean. Not live ones.” 

He sticks out his tongue at her, and they keep eating.

\--

Later that night he’s dreaming and the skin under his hands is so smooth and he runs his fingers through her hair and kisses her at the corner of her eye, and then pulls back and— _and it’s Nick and he’s pressed against him and panting and Lincoln scrapes his fingernails down Nick’s chest and then sucks a hickey into his neck, moaning against him and thrusting his hips in a rhythm that feels so comfortable, so familiar, so—_

\--

The next morning Lincoln wakes up in a damp sweat. He groans at the feeling in his boxers— _A wet dream? Really? Am I twelve?_ —and checks the clock. Time for work. He can hear Liv in the shower, and he tries not to imagine the way the rivulets of water would stream down her body, lithe and firm under his hands as his mouth kisses a path across her shoulder… Lincoln bites down onto the inside of his cheek, hard, and then gets out of bed, dropping to the floor to do pushups and work out the tension he can feel in every single muscle. 

He’s on push-up number thirty-three when he hears the water shut off in the shower, and then the quiet, routine sounds of Liv drying off and putting on makeup. Lincoln flips onto his back and stares at the ceiling, listening to caps snap on bottles and the sink run a few times. He closes his eyes and thinks of anything to take his mind off her—the Statue of Liberty, trig proofs, Thom Yorke—but then he hears her call,

“I’m done, Lincoln!”

And he gets up off the floor and goes to take a shower. 

\--

Later, after they’ve apprehended another rogue shapeshifter (David Robert Jones’ apparent absence, probably stuck in the other universe, had left a void in leadership that a few ambitious shapeshifters are trying to fill) and interrogated it to absolutely no end, Lincoln and Liv drive back to her apartment together in silence, both worn out from a stressful day.

“Hey, do you want—”

“I think I’m—”

They say it at the exact same time, and then stop and awkwardly look at each other. 

“You go ahead,” he says to her. 

She shrugs and says, “I think I’m going to take a nap when we get home.”

“Ah,” he replies, disappointed. He had meant to ask her if she wanted to go to the natural history museum, which, like apparently most museums in this universe, was open afternoons to late evenings instead of during the day. 

“What were you going to say?” she asks.

“Oh, nothing,” he says, and though she looks over at him with that _look_ on her face she gets when he’s shutting in on himself, he can’t snap out of it, can’t find the right words to express what he’s really feeling. He can’t ever find the right words. 

When they get inside her apartment, he sits heavily on the couch and closes his eyes. He can feel her watching him from the doorway to her bedroom, and he opens his eyes and looks over. She’s leaning against the doorframe, head cocked to the side, studying him. 

“What?” he asks. 

She just blows out a quick breath through her nose and shakes her head, rolling her eyes a little. “Nothin’.” Then she goes into her bedroom and shuts the door.

Lincoln feels like he’s missed something—something crucial. But he’s damned if he knows what it is. Instead, the itch to visit a museum that will contain billions of years of history about an alternate universe gets stronger, and he stands again. 

He calls through her door, “Hey, Liv, I’m gonna go out. I’ll see you later.” She says something muffled back that sounds like, “Okay,” and he heads out the door. 

Lincoln’s used to isolation by now, always moving from place to place and not putting roots down, but the sting of no companionship never goes away. It’s always been a problem: the loner who hates being alone. But he doesn’t know anyone in the universe who’d want to go to a museum with him except the woman upstairs who wants to sleep, or—He’s halfway down the stairwell before he realizes he could have some company after all. Lincoln pauses only a second, the words _my Lincoln_ echoing in his head, and then he dials up Nick Lane’s number and gives him a call. 

\--

“So you just left her there?” Nick asks, raising his eyebrows.

“She was taking a nap.”

Nick starts laughing, loudly, and a few of the other museum visitors stare at them. Lincoln mouths an apology and pulls Nick into the next room. “What’s so funny?”

“She wanted you to take a nap _with_ her, you moron,” Nick says, and Lincoln trips over his own feet. Nick grabs his wrist tight to steady him, and Lincoln’s heart unexpectedly pounds a few times before he regains his balance and Nick lets go. Lincoln holds his arm straight out a few seconds too long. His wrist is throbbing, feeling like a current’s being run through it. He grips it with his other hand and rubs till the sensation of Nick’s touch is gone. He looks up. Nick is watching him, eyes narrowed. 

“She—she did not,” Lincoln protests weakly.

Nick’s looking at him a little strangely, something flickering in his eyes, but he just says matter-of-factly, “I’ve seen you two together. There’s something there. I can’t believe you don’t see it. Or feel it.”

_I can feel it_ , Lincoln suddenly hears in his own voice in his head. His head starts aching and he closes his eyes and puts a hand over his eyes to block out the light. He can hear Nick ask, “Are you okay?” and then he’s seeing in his mind those bright blue eyes staring back at him, and he’s sitting on a twin bed in the room of a basement he’s so familiar with but doesn’t recognize, and he feels a hand slide into his and lace their fingers together. In the vision he looks down and sees the hand, sees it, it’s so _real_ , and then he opens his eyes and Nick is holding his hand, squeezing, staring into his eyes. 

“Hey, Linc, are you okay?” Nick asks, his voice low but urgent. “Do you need to sit down?” Nick doesn’t wait for an answer, just steers Lincoln over to a marble bench against the wall and pushes him down, sitting right next to him.

Lincoln drops his head into his hands and rubs his temples hard, trying to get rid of the vestiges of the headache. _What was that?_ he wonders, and then tilts his head and looks up, sideways, at Nick, who’s hovering over him like a worried mother hen. 

“How close were you with your Lincoln?” Lincoln asks.

Nick blinks in surprise at the question, but then sighs and sweeps a hand through his hair. “Um… pretty close.”

“Did you—you said there were—um, handjobs—”

Nick snorts. “Yeah, we messed around a _lot_. We never actually—um. Did more than just, you know, getting off together, handjobs, blowjobs, and… so on…” 

Lincoln shakes his head. “I feel like Olivia.”

“What? The redhead?”

“No, Agent Dunham from the other universe, the blonde one. She… it’s complicated. But she had two sets of memories for a while, until one set overtook the other.”

Nick is quiet, and then says, “So…”

Lincoln laughs lightly. “I think I know how she felt, I mean. I keep… getting these flashes of… something. Maybe memories. Maybe hallucinations. After working in Fringe Division, I know it could literally be anything.”

“But what, you remember… being with—with the other Nick?”

Lincoln closes his eyes and tries to see it in his head. Kendra’s house. He can almost—almost see Kendra’s house in his head, can see the kitchen and the oven and the door to the basement, and—

His eyes snap open. “Your bedroom was in the basement,” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Nick says. 

“And your favorite band was—Radiohead. You loved—”

“Radiohead?” Nick asks, confused. “Who?”

Lincoln stares at him in shock. “You’ve never heard of _Radiohead_?” 

“Uh, I don’t think so.”

“Oh my god. Maybe I did pick the wrong universe,” Lincoln says, but he’s laughing. “So wait, _The Bends_ , _OK Computer_ , none of that happened here?” 

“My favorite band in high school was Blur.”

Lincoln furrows his brow. “I remember Blur. They did that song, ‘Whoo-hoo!’” he sings.

Nick grins. “‘Song 2.’ From their ’97 self-titled album. But they were already pretty popular over here by then.”

“Really? What about… did you have Oasis?”

“Oasis? Uh… not ringing a bell.”

Lincoln blinks a few times. “This is so weird. Wait, do you have Coldplay if you didn’t have Radiohead?”

“Coldplay? Oh, you mean that British pop band?”

_“Pop band?”_

Nick laughs and they keep talking about music, getting up off the bench and making their way through the museum. Lincoln finds out all about the history of popular music in this universe—Nick is pretty well-versed—and then they start talking about TV, and movies, and pretty soon Lincoln can’t stop laughing when Nick’s describing the long and well-respected acting career of one Mr. Ronald Reagan, and for just a second, just a blissful, perfect second, every worry and doubt he has is lifted away, leaving him feeling free and light and so happy. 

\--

He still has a half-smile on his face when he gets back to Liv’s apartment, and takes the steps two at a time up to her door. Lincoln lets himself in the door and then drops the keys on the floor, staring, slack-jawed at Liv, who is sitting on the couch in just loose gray sweatpants and a white bra. She looks up from the tablet she’s reading and smiles.

“Hey, where you’d get off to?”

_Get off_ , he hears in his head, echoing, and he has to close his eyes and grope through his brain for human language, because any knowledge he had about communicating effectively has vanished, completely, at the sight of her. 

“Lincoln?”

“I’m sorry, I just—I’m sorry, do you want a shirt, or—”

“Oh,” she says, the tone of her voice something indescribable—a mix between surprised and— _is that disappointment_? Lincoln opens his eyes and sees her stand up and head down the hall. “I got distracted going to get a shirt out of the laundry earlier, sorry about that. Nothing you haven’t seen before though, huh?” she calls over her shoulder, grinning at him. 

Lincoln gulps and just holds his hands out, at a loss for words, unable to tear his eyes away from the soft curve of her back, disappearing down the hall into darkness. He wants to follow her, pin her against a wall and kiss patterns into the crease of her neck, worship her body and mind and soul like she deserves, but he can’t seem to move his feet or even his brain in that direction, and then he hears the dryer door slamming shut.  

She comes back with a cotton tank top on and sits on the couch. He’s still just standing there by the door, so she gives him a look and pats the couch cushion a few feet from her. “Come on, Lincoln, you’re giving me a complex. Sit down.” 

“I—” He doesn’t understand the twist of emotions inside him, the overwhelming _want_ mixed with that ever-present _can’t_. He walks over to the couch and sits next to her, and then shifts his body slightly towards hers. She’s curled up with one leg under her, an arm on the back of the couch and another resting on her lap. 

“What’s going on here?” she asks, and she points a finger between the two of them, motioning back and forth. “What are we doing?”

“What do you…”

“Lincoln. I _see_ the way you look at me. And I—” She breaks off, shaking her head, and then asks, softly, “What do you want from me?” 

He gnaws worriedly on his lip, avoiding her gaze. “I… I like you, I guess.”

“You guess,” she repeats, and he balks at her tone. “But you aren’t sure.”

“No, I—I just…” Why can’t he ever _find the words_? He’s so out of practice at connecting with people that now that it’s what he wants more than anything in any universe, he doesn’t know what to do, what to say. He opens and closes his mouth a few more times and then stares at her pleadingly. 

“Why did you come to this universe, Lincoln?” she demands. “Why are you here?”

“I—something Peter said about—home is where the heart is,” he says quietly, and her expression softens. She moves slowly, deliberately across the couch toward him, and his heart pounds heavily. 

“So where is your heart?” she asks, swinging a leg over his lap to straddle him. He feels like every nerve is on fire, blazing against the warmth of her skin pressing into his. Lincoln blinks rapidly and looks up into her eyes, seeing a question there.

“Is this really happening?” he asks weakly, his hands moving to rest on her hips.

She laughs and dips her head closer to his. “Do you want it to happen?”

“Do _you_ want it to happen?” he asks, and then watches in dismay as her face closes off and she starts to pull away from him. He wants to grab at her, say the right words to her to bring back to him, to be the warm, loving Liv on his lap, and not the cold, disappointed Liv curling up again on the other end of the couch. He wants to cry. But he can’t do anything. 

“You… you’re not like him,” she says, but she’s not even really talking to Lincoln. “You’re… just different.”

He doesn’t want to ask who she’s talking about, though he knows she means the other Lincoln. He feels sick to his stomach and stands up, backing away.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” and he goes to the guest room and closes the door. 

\--

Lincoln wakes up the next morning with a cramp in his neck from sleeping oddly on the bed. He gets up and realizes he’s still in his clothes from the night before, must have passed out when he came into the bedroom to— _oh, right. To hide from Liv._ He slaps himself on his arm and breathes, “You idiot,” to himself. He needs to apologize. He changes quickly into off-work clothes, just a navy blue plaid shirt and jeans, and then takes a deep breath and heads out of the room. 

She’s not there. The door to her bedroom is open and he peeks in—not there either. 

“Liv?” he calls out, but there’s no answer. He sighs heavily and is trying to figure out what to do. It’s Saturday, so she’s probably not at the office unless there was an emergency—and in that case, he would have been called in too. So she’s definitely just avoiding him. 

“Great,” he says, and then flinches when he hears the _tweedle-eedle-eedle_ in his ear of someone calling him on the earcuff. He presses the receive button, and hears Nick’s voice: 

“Lincoln, how’s it going?”

Lincoln pauses and then answers honestly, “Awful, pretty much.”

“Why?! What’s up?”

“I—uh—I messed things up with Liv pretty bad last night.”

“Oh god. Okay, meet me at the Guggenheim.”

“The Gu—I wasn’t going to do art museums yet—”

“We’re skipping your history lessons today, Linc. Just getting a little normal weirdness into your life, okay? There’s an art exhibit based around astral projection, it’s perfect.” 

Lincoln considers it and then finally thinks, _Why not?_ and says, “All right, I’ll be there in about an hour.” 

“See you,” says Nick, and then ends the call.

Lincoln stands in the middle of the room, wondering if he should leave a note or something, but they don’t really have paper or pens over here, so he’s not sure how one goes about doing that. Finally, he picks her tablet up from the table and finds something like a notepad app, opening it up and typing, _“I’m sorry. Can we talk about it?”_ Then he places it carefully sitting upright on the couch and grabs a bagel from the kitchen breadbox on his way out the door. 

\--

“What is that?” Lincoln asks, pointing at what looks like a hologram, silver and glinting in the weird lighting on this level of the Guggenheim. It’s floating over a mannequin, twisting and writhing occasionally like it wants to fall to the floor but is being forced to stay where it is.

“That’s his soul,” Nick says matter-of-factly, taking a bite of his hot dog and licking mustard off his finger. Lincoln doesn’t understand the flip-flop he feels inside his chest seeing Nick’s tongue dart out, but he’s decided to just go with it.

“I’m sorry—his soul? Whose soul?”

“That guy,” Nick answers, pointing at the mannequin. Lincoln kneels next to it and then jumps back when he realizes the mannequin— _not a mannequin_ —is breathing. 

“Holy shit! That’s a person!”

Nick laughs. “Yeah, he’s projecting his soul. Aw, look, you distracted him.”

The silver glinty thing—his _soul_ —falls down and fits neatly into the body lying on the floor. Lincoln watches as the man opens his eyes slowly and then sits up, taking a drink from a water bottle next to him. Lincoln backs off a few paces and continues walking down the slowly-descending ramp of the Guggenheim to get to the next level. 

“I didn’t know people could do that,” Lincoln says, half to himself.

Nick doesn’t say anything, popping the rest of his hot dog in his mouth and chewing. He points at a video of two people dancing, what’s apparently their souls projected above them, dancing too.

“Is that possible?” Lincoln asks, then adds, “I’m not sure why I’m even still asking that question.”

“Not yet,” Nick says. “Almost everyone who does astral projection has to leave their body unconscious to do it. But maybe someday.”

Lincoln shrugs. “Impressive?”

“I’ll say. So, are we going to talk about her?” Nick asks, pursing his lips and giving Lincoln a look.

Lincoln groans. “It was… I was stupid.”

“You _are_ stupid,” Nick corrects. “You have this great chick waiting for you to make a move, and the best you can manage is ‘I like you, I guess’? Seriously, what the hell?” 

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!” Lincoln says, his voice getting louder. He walks ahead of Nick a pace, frustrated, and then turns, walking backwards and talking to Nick. “All my life it’s like there’s been this hole—or like, half my heart is missing, or something. I love people so easily, but I can never just…”

“Go for it?” Nick offers.

“Never let myself love someone fully. All in. No take-backs,” Lincoln tries to explain.

“Never? You never had a high school sweetheart, or something?”

Lincoln shakes his head and opens his mouth to talk about the girls he dated, casually, but then the back of his heel strikes something and he’s tripping, arms flailing out, falling right over backwards—Nick lunges forward to grab him, but Lincoln’s already too far gone, and Nick just gets pulled with him—

They land on the hard floor and Lincoln hits his head against the tile, and there’s a painful flash of light and then he’s transported, back to Nick Lane’s bedroom in his universe, he’s sixteen and lying on Nick’s bed, and a teenaged Nick is on top of him, and they’re kissing desperate and needy, Lincoln’s panting and hard and aching, rutting up against Nick, wanting release but also contact, close—so close—and Nick breaks off their kiss with a gasp, then presses open-mouthed kisses down to the corner of Lincoln’s jaw, sucking a hickey there and Lincoln comes like a shot, crying out and wrapping his arms around Nick, almost sobbing into his neck at the sweet release, and then he can feel the projection of Nick’s feelings onto him: the affection, the desire, the love—the _love_ , oh— 

Lincoln gasps and opens his eyes to Nick—the other Nick, grown-up alternate Nick—pushing himself up and off of Lincoln. Lincoln frantically grabs for his wrist and holds it tight, and Nick stops, frozen, staring down at Lincoln with his mouth half-open, eyes moist and filling with tears. 

“Did you—did you see any of that?” Lincoln asks, needing to know he isn’t crazy.

“I—” Nick gulps. “It wasn’t me, I mean it was me, but in him—in the other one, but I did—I saw it—I saw you and him and Lincoln, he loved you, so much, _so much_ —” 

Lincoln shakes his head slightly, trying to clear his mind. That was _real_. That happened. How did he forget that? _How could he forget that?_

Nick pulls back carefully from Lincoln, grabbing his hand and hoisting him up. People are staring. Lincoln doesn’t care. He’s shaken and feels exhausted.

“Come on, let’s—can we go?” he asks Nick, looking for an exit. 

“Yeah, okay,” says Nick.

They lean against each other and find the exit. Lincoln gets over his dizziness by the time they’re outside again in the fresh air, and then he sits down on a bench. Nick stays standing, looking down at him with a furrowed brow.

“That was—weird. It was kind of like with the blonde agent—Agent Dunham—she was doing all the work but I could see everything too, could feel what the other Nick Lane was feeling, and—I—I—” He breaks off and runs a hand through his hair, looking around. Lincoln just looks up at him, too tired to interrupt. “I liked my Lincoln,” Nick finally says. “I liked him a lot. We got along great and he was fun to mess around with. But we didn’t—I wouldn’t call what we were in a _relationship_. What I just saw—that was—more. Way more. How did you just forget all that?” 

Lincoln doesn’t say anything, just hunches over and sighs, resting his head in one hand. Nick finally sits next to him.

“I mean,” Nick continues, “did—did you break up, or…?”

“It’s fuzzy,” Lincoln says abruptly. “It’s all so, so unclear, like… Like you’re looking at your reflection in a pond and then someone drops a rock in. I…” He trails off, at a loss. It’s so sudden, all these new memories, new feelings, but it’s not entirely unpleasant. He wants more.

Nick hums and then finally claps a hand on Lincoln’s knee. “I know what you need.”

Lincoln looks up. “And what’s that?”

“Vodka,” Nick says. “You need vodka. Come on, my car’s just around the corner, I’ll take you home.”

“How did you find parking around here?” Lincoln asks, then laughs a little at the mundanity of the question.

“Magic,” Nick says cheekily. “Magic parking skills. I majored in parking with a minor in freaky weird shit. Thanks for the hands-on experience with that one.”

Lincoln laughs and doesn’t stop laughing until they’re almost halfway to Liv’s apartment. They stop on the way to pick up vodka and orange juice and then they’re home _(home, sort of_ , Lincoln thinks), going up the stairs. He’s nervous that Liv will be back, and maybe bringing Nick home wasn’t a good idea. He almost turns to tell Nick maybe he should leave just in case, but when he turns around, Nick is giving him a _look_. 

“You need some liquid encouragement, Lincoln. I’ll leave if it gets weird.”

Lincoln wants to reply, _It’s never not weird_ , but decides not to. He opens the door and lets out a sigh of both relief and disappointment seeing the tablet in the same place he had left it on the couch. He looks around when they get in, and can tell she hasn’t been back. 

“All right, where are the glasses?” Nick asks, heading into the kitchen. Lincoln sets the vodka and orange juice on the coffee table in front of the couch and then follows him, pulling two glasses out of a cupboard.

“Here,” Lincoln says, handing Nick one. They go back and sit on the couch. 

Nick picks up the vodka and opens it, then fills their glasses about a third full, following it up with two-thirds orange juice. He picks up a glass and raises it. 

“To freaky weird shit,” Nick says, “and to you finding your heart whole again.” Lincoln blinks once, frowning but then nodding, and picks up his glass. They clink, then down their drinks. 

“Oh man,” Lincoln says, wiping his mouth. “I forgot how good a simple screwdriver could be.”

“Screwdriver?” Nick asks. “Is that what you call this drink?”

“Yeah, why, what do you call it?”

“Chisel,” Nick says. 

“What—why?”

“I dunno,” Nick answers. “Why do you call it a screwdriver?”

Lincoln considers, but then shrugs. “I have no idea.”

Nick laughs and pours them another. “And again,” he says, raising his glass, “to freaky weird shit.”

“I will always drink to that,” Lincoln says, and clinks his glass against Nick’s.

\--

An hour and three chisels each later, Lincoln hears a key in the lock and realizes Liv is home. He scrambles to sit up straight, discovering his head feels pleasantly light, but he shoots Nick a look.

“If it gets weird,” Nick repeats, holding his hands up.

The door opens, and Liv steps through. She stops, seeing Nick, and then smiles easily at him. “Oh, hey. How you doing, Nick?”

“I’m great,” Nick says. “How are you?”

“I’m all right,” she answers, her eyes flickering to Lincoln.

“Hey, Liv, I—” Lincoln starts, but Nick interrupts,

“Do you want a chisel?”

Liv glances at Nick. “Oh, I don’t really like the taste of alcohol…”

“That’s perfect,” Nick says, “because you won’t even taste the vodka. Here, I’ll only put a little in.”

She quirks her mouth to the right, but then shrugs. “All right. Just a little, though.” She walks over and sits in a chair across from the couch, on the other side of the coffee table.

Nick pours her a glass with just a finger of vodka in it and the rest orange juice, then hands it to her. 

“What are we drinking to?” she asks.

“To second chances,” Nick says, raising his glass. She catches his eye and narrows hers a little bit, but then chuckles. 

“All right. I’ll drink to that.” She raises her glass and takes a sip, then scrunches up her face. “It just tastes like orange juice.”

“Exactly,” says Nick. 

Lincoln sips his own screwdriver—chisel—and sinks back into the couch, relaxing. 

“So what’d you boys get up to today?” Liv asks.

“We went to the Guggenheim,” Nick answers. 

Lincoln doesn’t mind him talking for them; he’s not feeling particularly chatty—in fact, his whole body is buzzing, maybe from the alcohol a little bit, but also from—something else. He glances sidelong at Nick, who he’s almost startled to find is staring back at him. 

“Lincoln had a fall,” Nick says.

“He—what?”

“I fell down,” Lincoln says quietly.

“Are you okay?” she asks, concerned.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

There’s a pause, and then she asks, “What’s the exhibit right now?”

“Astral projection,” Nick replies. 

“Huh.”

Lincoln watches the two of them from behind his drink. Nick is vibrating, almost, and Lincoln can tell he’s hyped up on something. Playing matchmaker, maybe. He rolls his eyes and smirks at the idea, then looks at Liv. She’s taking careful sips of her drink, smiling at Nick and chatting amiably about something, but Lincoln’s not really paying attention. He’s distracted by the very presence of her, her physicality and laughter, the way she fills the room for him. Nick might as well not even be there, which is most of the reason why Lincoln jumps in his seat when Nick suddenly says,

“So you two should kiss.”

Lincoln almost drops his drink, glares at Nick, and then looks apologetically at Liv. “Sorry, he’s dr—”

“I’m not drunk,” Nick says steadily, and Lincoln knows, he’s not. Neither is Lincoln. He’s abruptly very, very sober. “But you two could tear this room apart with the sexual tension, and so I thought I’d say something.”

Lincoln closes his eyes and tries to figure out how to apologize to Liv, but then he hears her voice, clear and a little sassy from the other side of the coffee table, “Why don’t you kiss him first?”

_First_ , Lincoln hears over and over, and then opens his eyes and darts a look back and forth between them. “Kiss him?” he squawks, and Liv giggles. 

“Yeah. I mean, it’s only fair.”

Lincoln’s not really sure how that works, but he can feel a change in the tide, as if somehow things are moving in his favor, very slowly, very carefully—but this is definitely not a step back, right?—this is definitely—forward—

Nick shrugs. “All right.”

Lincoln is almost trembling, and he thinks he should down the rest of his drink to calm himself, but he can’t quite manage to connect his brain to his hand. He watches as Nick very carefully places his own drink on the coffee table, and then moves to crawl across the couch toward him. Lincoln’s eyes widen as Nick moves a hand toward his lap, but Nick just takes Lincoln’s drink out of his hand and puts it on the coffee table too. 

Lincoln is hyperaware of Liv just five feet away, watching them on the couch, but he can’t make himself look at her. Nick crowds into his space and then swings a leg over Lincoln’s lap to straddle him and— _wow, how did this happen twice in less than twenty-four hours with two different people?_ Lincoln’s wondering. He doesn’t want to mess it up, this time. 

“Wait, I can’t see,” he hears Liv say, and then sees out of the corner of his eye as she moves from the chair to take Nick’s place on the couch. “All right, continue,” she says, and he can hear the grin in her voice.

Lincoln looks up at Nick’s face, taking in the confidence in those bright blue eyes, the way Nick’s tongue darts out of his mouth to moisten his lips, and the familiar-but-not-familiar lines of his cheekbones and jaw. He feels like he’s in high school again, and then he places a hand on Nick’s side and is incredibly aware of this being a _man_ on his lap, not a teenage boy from a half-gone memory. Lincoln can feel his heart beating in his chest, and it’s like a lifeline to a past he somehow forgot but is now remembering—before he can think to stop himself, he’s putting a hand up on Nick’s face and pulling him down into a kiss— 

And then his world changes.

He can feel Nick’s lips, the softness of them, and he can taste Nick, like cinnamon—but he’s transported again to teenage Lincoln, sitting on a bed next to a teenage Nick, looking down at him with so much longing and love and he’s feeling _everything_ he can possibly feel, remembering _everything_ , and then he leans down and kisses Nick’s lips, and it’s like coming home to himself, his heart pounding _one-two-three_ and then easing into a normal beat. He gasps and then he’s back in Liv’s apartment, the alternate Nick Lane on his lap, kissing him. It’s not the same as his Nick, who kissed him like it was the last thing he was going to do in the world, but it was nice—good— _hot_ , really. 

Lincoln shifts in his seat to try to hide that he’s half-hard. Nick curls a hand around Lincoln’s bicep and presses his fingers in, so hard he might leave bruises. Lincoln gasps and rolls his hips up involuntarily, desperate for some friction. 

Nick laughs and darts a kiss onto the ridge of his cheekbone. “The other one always liked that too,” he murmurs, then he pulls back and carefully stands up. “Your turn,” he says to Liv, but her eyes don’t move from staring at Lincoln, bright and curious.

Lincoln looks at her and reaches out a hand that she takes. 

“I couldn’t—I didn’t know how, before,” he tries to explain. “But—Nick helped me remember what it is to love someone, to really, really love someone.”

She squeezes his hand and Lincoln keeps talking, “A long time ago, I—had my heart broken. And I guess—somehow it hurt me so much that I blocked out the parts of myself that—that belong to you, rightfully. Because, Liv, I—I came here to be with you. I just want to—be here for you, with you, because I can’t imagine an alternate universe where I don’t get to see you every day—even if it’s not—even if you don’t— _mmph_ —”

She cuts him off with a kiss, leaning all the way across the couch to reach his lips, and it’s like fireworks inside his chest, like all his life has been preparing him for _this moment_ , with her moving onto his lap, her hands pressed against his chest like they’re trying to trap his heart— _it’s yours_ , he thinks, _completely yours_ —and she tastes amazing and feels amazing and he can’t stop his hands from traveling down from her sides to her hips, pulling her closer. 

“I needed to hear you say it,” she whispers, breaking off their kiss. “Because you aren’t him, you aren’t like him, and I didn’t want you to think—that you had to—take his place, that you were responsible for me—”

Lincoln shakes his head. “No, I—since the moment I saw you—it’s nothing to do with him—”

She kisses him again, deep and long, and then Lincoln hears someone clear their throat. He looks up, Liv looking up too, and Nick is grinning down at them.

“Okay, it got weird,” he says to Lincoln. 

Liv tilts her head, studying Nick. Then she glances back at Lincoln, who shrugs. 

“It’s not that weird,” she says to Nick. “Why don’t you stay?”

For the first time since Lincoln’s met him, Nick looks taken off-guard, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. Lincoln starts laughing, and then Liv reaches up and grabs Nick’s shirt, pulling him down to her. 

Lincoln watches her kiss him, watches Nick lean into her, dropping to his knees for a better angle, and Lincoln’s happy to find he’s not remotely jealous, just—he shifts again, completely hard. Liv laughs and her fingers trail feather-light down his stomach, lightly touching over his crotch through his jeans. His hips jerk at her touch, and he has no idea how he got this lucky this quickly, but he’s not complaining. 

“Well, boys,” Liv says, smiling and looking between them. “Should we take this to the bedroom?”

“Um,” Nick manages to say.

Lincoln leans forward and kisses Liv again. “I’m so glad—I’m so glad I’m _home_ ,” he says quietly to her. “Here with you.” 

She brightens and seems to bloom, warmth and the light of happiness coloring her cheeks, and she puts her hands around his neck and presses her lips gently against his. “Me too,” she murmurs. “I need you.”

His heart is full to bursting at her words and tone and everything about her—and everything that he loves in the world—it’s all her. Then they stand up together, pulling Nick off his knees and moving into an embrace.

“Thank you,” Lincoln says to him. “For getting me here.”

Nick raises his eyebrows but his smile is wide and pleased. “My pleasure.”

“We’ll see about that,” Liv says, and then pulls them both by their wrists into the bedroom.


End file.
